Soyuz Cluster Launch

Russia's Soyuz 2-1A Rocket is targeting liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on Friday, July 14 with a cluster of 73 satellites headed into Sun Synchronous Orbit for Earth Observation, meteorology, technology demonstrations and science. The primary payload of the flight, the 600kg Kanopus I-VK Earth Observer, will be joined by five microsatellites ranging from 17 to 120 Kilograms and 67 CubeSats.

Soyuz, flying with a Fregat upper stage, will first inject the primary payload into its target orbit ahead of another series of maneuvers to deploy the secondary payloads into two different orbits.